The Great She Elephant

You can blame Bill Bailey for this

2008-07-24T10:02:00.004Z

A mere two or three years after I first had the idea, I've taken the twenty minutes or so it required to get my t-shirt venture up and running.

The idea is t-shirt slogans that make a meta-statement about t-shirt slogans and in doing so say something* about the wearer without actually saying anything about the wearer. They are generic rather than specific. I thought of it when I heard Bill Bailey deliver the following joke:

"Three men went into a bar. Much hilarity ensued."

The process was pretty simple (as the designs perhaps indicate) - Creative Craving runs on the same principal as Cafepress - you set up a store front, upload your designs and hope someone buys something. Creative Craving deals with the manufacture, shipping, hideous stuff like PCI DSS and as a result takes most of the moolah. There are quite a few organisations like this - if you look up Cafepress on Wikipedia you get a list - but Creative Craving seems to be the only British one at present and in the unlikely event I earn any commission, I'd prefer to get a bank transfer in Great British Pounds rather than a US dollar cheque. Or check. The only downside is that it doesn't ship outside the UK.

I think we all should launch our own t-shirt labels.

Anyhow, that's the latest displacement activity that is preventing me from confronting my fear of failure over the novel.

*a bit too clever perhaps?**
** that's right, insult the customer.

Oh crap. Just answered the last question

2008-07-22T14:03:00.002Z

As I posted a while ago, the sound card on my PC has stopped working. I deduce that this is something to do with Windows XP service pack 3 which I need to run my new printer and which I installed just before the sound card went kaput. Sadly, there are no drivers available to update it.

So.

I decided to move over to the crappy little Advent laptop I was made to buy for work in January. This has never worked particularly well and today it wouldn't turn on at all. I could get it fixed but having previously taken it to a unauthorised PC repair place it is technically out of warranty.

I think there is a new computer in my future. So the question now is:

PC or Mac?

I use the Internet, email, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I'd like to learn Photoshop and Dreamweaver at some point. Any thoughts?

Boring, kind of obvious but still not a no brainer

2008-07-22T11:59:00.004Z

It cost me £1300 to run my car last year. I really don't use it much except to take the cats to the cattery and to go to PC World and the outlet mall in Livingston. At the moment I have a garage but once I buy a flat that won't be the case and I'll have to buy a parking permit. Edinburgh has a fairly good City Car scheme. I could sell it for about £700, which would come in useful at present.

But: all the City Car cars are manual and having RSI makes driving an automatic much easier. And you aren't allowed to transport pets in City Car cars. And I like having a car - I wasn't allowed one by my parents or my ex-husband - so it lets me pretend I'm a grown-up.

But: a taxi to the cattery would probably only be about £50 so that means no more than £200 a year. And it would be a gesture towards being greener.

I should sell the car, shouldn't I?

My new future - the plan

2008-07-19T12:19:00.000Z

Umm...

A day in the life of an elephant of leisure

2008-07-17T10:36:00.004Z

I haven't slept because I spent the entire night goggled eyed with fright and worry. So I give up at about 6 and get up and go to Starbucks for breakfast and a newspaper.

I spend most of the morning whining at a financial adviser I know about the situation. Unglazing his eyes, he asks, "So, going anywhere nice on holiday?"

"Well, I was," I reply sourly. For the record, Miami at Christmas, with V. Plans now on hold.

I still however have the energy to look at him carniverously. He must be late 20s so I imagine that I am out of luck there.

Time to buy a mid morning snack - peperami - I'm still doing this low carb thing although how long that will last as the credit crunch bites, I don't know. Porridge is very cheap you know.

Ballet class, much harder than usual. I can't follow most of what the teacher says, thanks to constant roadworks noise from the Grassmarket and because I'm hiding at the back of the class, I can't see her feet. Not a success all things considered.

I get a cheap lunch from a crepe stand. I then get distracted by the White Company sale where I buy a sheet. It's for the home so that barely counts as expenditure, right?

Back to the office where I work on last year's accounts and reflect on how what had looked like a poor year may turn out to be a far better year than this one financially. I further reflect on the wisdom of having signed a swingeing restraint of trade clause in my contract with the magazine.

Salsa class with Marsha Klein, followed by drinks.

Budget for the day £10.
Expenditure for the day £68.
Result - should be misery, shouldn't it?

Work is a bit like a relationship

2008-07-15T16:56:00.004Z

You bump along, not especially happy but ready to recognise that nothing is perfect and that the security at least is nice. Then one day your other half says or does something that is just 5% more irritating or hurtful than usual and before you know it you are screaming your head off, demanding a divorce.

Last weekend therefore probably wasn't the best weekend to buy a Prada coat (in the sale, no returns). It's silk though so in extremis, I can probably eat it.

I think I have however recognised that I am not a team player and nor do I want to be unless I am in charge of the team.

Actually, I knew that already.

Update: Just had a chat with the publisher. That was in fact considerably less unpleasant than my actual divorce. And up to Christmas at least I will be working on my novel. While not eating or shopping.

Unsatisfied

2008-07-09T19:58:00.002Z

There is something peculiarly disturbing about losing part of what you are eating, mid-nom. I still clearly remember and am traumatised by a bourbon biscuit breaking while I was eating it and half of it falling on the floor. I was four at the time.

I'm experiencing something similar right now. My favourite bit of any Indian meal is the poppadum. Mine was on a side plate next to my plate of takeaway and I had eaten only a small piece when Rosa exited at top speed from the cat cludgie and leapt onto the table, breaking a bit off the poppadum.

I have standards. The bit she had stamped on went in the bin, mourned, and she got thrown on the floor. The little sod turned straight round and jumped up again, right into the middle of the poppadum.

So, while sated with curry I am strangely unsatisfied.

And completely dissatisfied too. Little monster.

Five things I've most recently bought on ebay

2008-07-06T20:10:00.002Z

A pair of ram's horns £7.04. I'm not entirely sure why at present.
A lipstick (discontinued) £12. Shiny, sparkly.
A TV aerial lead £1.75. Perhaps I'll figure out how to switch the TV on next.
The world's teeniest bottle of Guerlain L'Heure Bleue parfum concentration £12.99
Fake Nars eyeshadow £9.99 and still waiting for my refund

What about you?

The amazing inflatable elephant

2008-07-06T19:58:00.002Z

I'm feeling sorry for myself. Plus, it's press week this week and that means mega stress. So there will be none of this healthy eating, low carb nonsense going on this week, I can tell you. For a start, Friday being press day, pizza will be had. I've had pizza for the last two press days and that's as good as tradition as far as I'm concerned. I'm now 9 stone 3lbs and I am taking wagers on how much pork I can pile on by the end of the week.

Career suggestions please

2008-07-05T17:50:00.007Z

For once* in my life I am actually in a position where I could retrain.

You must have formed a view of me from the blog.

I don't much like people. I especially don't like children. I'm not keen on being told what to do. I think I'm reasonably creative but not especially so. Anything that requires too much use of the hands is out (particularly keyboard work). I'm easily bored and unduly bothered by comparative status. I'm a bit of a coward. Oh and I cannot and will not sell. Which is one of the reasons for the carping below.

What shall I do?

*Actually that's not true. I retrained in 1990 as a software engineer. The result was RSI (for life), a bad marriage and depression. Sadly it was also the most fun I've ever had. Except for the formal methods. Didn't like them.

Hypochondria alert

2008-07-05T17:14:00.003Z

I had my blood pressure taken on Thursday and it was unusually low for me. I was feeling absolutely dreadful as I always do after a return flight within a 48 hour period - tired, dizzy, nauseous (I threw up later), splitting headache that lasted another 24 hours, upset tum. Apparently all this is caused by dehydration. Another reason to love this job. I'm going to try oral rehydration salts after my flight to and from Norwich this Friday. At present I'm needing about two days in bed to recover every time I go anywhere by plane these days. The pharmacist wanted to know if they were a precaution for an exotic holiday. Exotic indeed.

I know I'm not supposed to say anything about work on the blog but I'm getting past caring. Would it just hurt them to occasionally stop carping and say something nice. At least I'm satisfied that I'm doing a decent job but it would be nice to get that delusion validated from time to time.

Plus, hardly surprisingly after 13 years of self employment I CANNOT ABIDE being told what to do.

What if God was one of us?*

2008-07-03T10:43:00.003Z

Actually she is. She's blonde, American and she works in asset management.

At the conference I went to yesterday there were some people with remarkably stupid names.

Mr Wild, Mr Strange, Mr Parody, Mr Lover (who works for a building society) but best of all -

Ms S. Celestial-One.

Gotta love the hyphenation.

Update: not making this up.
Update 2: does this make me a stalker?

*Joan Osbourne

Over and under equipped, simultaneously

2008-07-01T10:29:00.004Z

I normally find that PCs last about 3 years before they keel over and die. My current desktop has now reached 4 years of age and as of a couple of days ago, the sound has stopped working so I suspect that other bits will start dropping off very shortly.

I could really do without buying another computer. I currently have this one (1) which was incredibly high spec four years ago and is now very low spec. I have a new laptop (2) (bought reluctantly in January for a conference and used 3 times so far) which has the same specification and is thus teetering on being obsolete. It also has very few ports. I have a Windows Me (3) machine which is currently in use as a bedside table. I have an incredibly heavy obsolete Toshiba portable (4) bought 3 years ago and used twice. I have an Asus eeee (5) which is still in its box.

I could start using the laptop (2) as my office machine but then I suppose I'll have to buy another laptop at some point as I'm not overwhelmingly keen on taking my office machine on trips.

Can anyone suggest anything useful I can do with all this stuff? I had thought about using the Toshiba as a music centre in the sitting room but that requires effort and I'm not entirely sure I can remember the password to switch it on.

It all seems so wasteful.

Get out of my face, celebrity dude

2008-06-26T11:00:00.002Z

Dinner on Tuesday night with Liz was somewhat spoilt by being sat at a table next to a luxuriantly over coiffed Ralph Fiennes. I felt unable to look towards his table all evening and developed a rather stiff neck.

I was a little less well mannered the time I was sat at a table next to Joan Collins because I just couldn't get over how different she looked without her wig.

Then there was the time I had to wait for an x-ray while sitting next to Alan Rickman. I'd just been told that I was so badly injured that I would never work again and I was very upset. I could have done with a bit of interest or comfort from someone but there was certainly none forthcoming from that grumpy bastard.

It wasn't quite as bad as attending a therapy type event with a bona fide (and not to be named) A list female celeb. That was so distracting that I got no benefit from it at all.

Celebs, get out my face. Stick to celeb places, with other celebs.

Somewhat improved

2008-06-26T09:19:00.002Z

CAT CLUDGIE - OCUPADO

My thanks to those who have enquired about the wellbeing of Mits. I was very scared about getting home last night to a rigid pussy (I've personally never found a use for a dead cat) but she seems a lot better. Not perfect so another vet trip may be in order in a day or two if things don't improve further.

Gigolo - ur doing it wrong

2008-06-22T09:34:00.003Z

Where Golden and his ilk are getting it wrong is that today's single female doesn't need a hired man for sex, she needs him to take the cat to the vet when she's busy at work, or to stay in to sign for deliveries, or to move heavy stuff.

There are two flashpoints for me about being single. One is having no-one to meet me at the airport when I get back from yet another shitty business trip. The other is the sort of day I'm having today when there is work that has to be finished, cats that have to go to the emergency vet, errands that have to be run because I'm away for work AGAIN all week and won't be able to do them then.

Of course, if this was a pink, sticky brat, no-one would blink twice at me cancelling the work trip but because she has fur and a tail, what's the point in even asking. Christ, I wish I had family, or a partner.

Update: £140 later Mits is now deemed safe to leave for a few days but I am instructed to leave out some cranberry juice for her. Who knew? The work is done enough. The errand was aborted (having been told that I had to go into T-Mobile today to pick up the new phone, I got there to be told that I couldn't do this on a Sunday). I could still do with a spouse though.

Honestly, why bother?

2008-06-21T17:43:00.003Z

Just what is the point of manufacturing fake eyeshadow? I am pondering this as I look at the clearly fake* Nars eyeshadow duo that arrived yesterday from an ebay vendor. I paid £10 + postage for it (a Nars duo in a shop is £23). Let's say she took a 100% profit on it so it may have cost her £5 from a wholesaler who perhaps paid £3 for it. That £3 will have covered the cost of it shipping it from China where it was presumably made as well as manufacturing costs. Eyeshadow packaging is fiddly stuff - the outside of the Nars case is matte rubber and they got that more or less right. Then there's the mirror, the plastic inlay (less convincing in this case), the metal pans, the shadows themselves, the bit of clear plastic that goes between the shadow and the mirror, printing the paper labels and sticking them to the case, printing the box. It's a production line job and that means expensive machinery.

I can see the economic imperative behind ripping off a £1000 bag and selling the fake for a £100 or so - bags can be made by kiddy labour without a lot of complicated tooling up. But a relatively low value cosmetic item in relatively complex packaging?

I've filed a Paypal dispute but I find the whole thing more puzzling and dispiriting than anything else - so much effort for something that sells maybe 5-10 examples a week on ebay.

Maybe it's made by a bona fide cosmetics manufacturer and is not crammed full of lead. But I'm not planning to try it to check - I've had my eyelids for a while and I quite like them.

*The packaging is subtly wrong, it's incorrectly labelled, the pans are bigger than Nars pans, the colours are wrong and the wrong way round in the duo case and it smells different.

Basic maths

2008-06-20T18:07:00.001Z

Hangover + sleep deprivation + Red Bull + ballet class = bloody awful idea.

Birthday lolz

2008-06-19T14:19:00.001Z

see more crazy cat pics

Strippers and blow

2008-06-19T08:10:00.002Z

Yup. It's my birthday. I plan to spend the day

working.

How exhausted are you?

2008-06-17T11:34:00.002Z

Where 10 = bursting with energy and joie de vivre and 1 = slug.

Me = 2. I slept through my ballet class on Friday. I couldn't be bothered to go to yoga yesterday. No doubt I will weasel out of salsa tomorrow.

I blame it on all this work travel.
Plus my advancing years. 44 on Thursday. Scream.

Orange are not the only crooks

2008-06-15T10:29:00.002Z

Initially I was quite impressed to get a letter from T-Mobile offering me a selection of 3 different upgrade phones to renew my contract with them.

That was till I researched the phones a little. Now I have a quandary. Shall I choose:

the Sony Ericsson whose keys crack and fall off within 3 days of use
the Samsung whose screen cracks within 3 days of use
or Nokia whose 13 days of standby time actually equates to 6 hours on average and which resets itself, losing all your data, on a regular basis.

Whaddya think?

Easy virtue?

2008-06-14T16:36:00.002Z

I took a whole lot of elderly electronics to the recycling point this morning - broken printer, obsolete fax etc - instead of dumping them and expected to feel good in a green sort of way afterwards. But I didn't. There's something about chucking an item that cost £300 or more into a big skip that made me feel quite ill. Yes it was broken, but it shouldn't have been.

I think the new printer may prove to have been a mistake. It has a lid that makes it look like a baby photocopier (actually it is a baby photocopier) - all sticky out plastic trays and things and there is only a number of times that an overweight Siamese can thud onto that sort of arrangement before it breaks. Stupid stupid me for thinking about functionality, speed and price and not remembering that it is in reality nothing more than heated cat furniture.

Truth in advertising

2008-06-13T20:05:00.002Z

Older viewers may remember the above ad. Well, it's all true. Admittedly it was the airport bus to Malpensa and Patrick the handsome* Brazilian had considerably less hair but it pretty much went like that except since he was going to Sao Paolo and I was going to Edinburgh I lost him at check in.

It was slightly inconvenient that he only spoke Italian and Portuguese and I speak neither but it's amazing how much you can find out about someone nonetheless**. He's divorced, has a son, is going home because his father is ill.

Contact details were not exchanged (this is real life after all) but I think that's the first time anyone has actually flirted with me in years***.

*I say handsome but since he didn't take his sunglasses off it was difficult to tell.
** Relax, those of you know me. I did not show him photos of the cats, although it was tempting.
*** Other than Catanova of course but he was only after my flesh****.
**** Chicken if you recall.

Don't wanna

2008-06-07T10:49:00.004Z

Business travel that is. Last week Brussels. Next week Milan. The week after I have put my foot down and refused to go to Lagos, which will no doubt result in a black mark in my copy book. The week after London. The week after that London. The week after that Norwich. My carbon footprint has bunions on it.

I spent most of my time in Brussels fussing because my brand new Blackberry wasn't working properly. I regained most of the weight that I had spent the previous two and a half weeks suffering to lose. I spent an obscene amount of money in duty free on yet more makeup I will never wear. I drank too much. I didn't get anywhere near enough sleep. I fell asleep during some of the conference sessions. What a complete waste of 4 days. Now I feel like crap and I have to work all weekend to make up for it.